‘I Wasn’t Able to Even Unseal My Eyes. That’s The Extent of the Swelling I Was’

Onemanda Preisinger is nervous about her daughter’s upcoming 13th birthday celebration. Not for the typical reasons associated with a house full of clamorous adolescent children, but because it’s the first time she will debut her recently altered face to acquaintances and relatives. “Obviously I’m going to tell all guests as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old real estate agent from south Florida.

Her appearance is, well, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though held together by industrial-grade tape. Her altered – and she’s keen to stress, temporary – appearance is the outcome of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a doctor in Turkey’s Istanbul, the previous month. “My poor husband became emotional when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even open my eyes. That’s how swollen I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I needed to inform him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not in pain. I just look like someone attacked me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

Based on cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of people choosing to undergo a facelift in their 20s and 30s – significantly before a ten years prior to most doctors’ usual candidate age of 40 to 60. (Though most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We address heredity, not age.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facelifts,” says based in London aesthetic plastic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a former NHS consultant who focuses on the head and neck. “It’s a major surgery, and I’m a bit concerned when I see individuals choosing it as a personal preference.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A rhytidectomy, alternatively called a rhytidectomy, elevates the tissues in the face that start to sag as we grow older. “Human faces are built a little like onion layers,” says Kent-based facial plastic surgeon Marc Pacifico. “Dermis and adipose on the top, then a stratum of connective tissue called the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the structural foundation of the face. And that’s what ages us; that is what loosens and sags and drags the skin downward with it.”

You risk performing surgery on individuals that have deeper issues. It’s not advisable for an conscientious surgeon to pursue

Previously reserved of moneyed older people, overuse of injectables – when excessive use of dermal fillers expands the face and leads to looseness in the dermis – combined with the widespread use of slimming medications, low-cost surgical travel, and the development of novel, celebrity-endorsed operative methods are attracting a new kind of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facelifts over the past 12 months in the UK; while a study found that the percentage of younger facelift patients is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged thirty-five to fifty-five.

“People are now requesting to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the techniques are following,” comments Orfaniotis. At present, the trending procedure is the comprehensive facial lift, a technique evangelised by figures including reality TV star Kris Jenner, to style creator Marc Jacobs.

Deep Plane Technique

Where a conventional facelift involves lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, allowing doctors to reshape the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and avoiding the tight, stretched look sometimes wrought by more traditional techniques. “We’re not putting tension on the skin because we’re going below, to the underlying structures,” explains prestigious London cosmetic doctor Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the deep plane technique. “It is the deeper tissue that is repositioned. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the entire soft tissue layer as a unified block results in a more natural-looking and longer-lasting outcome. It also means that the surgery is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the cosmetic field terms it – but for “beautification” and facial restructuring, too. “We receive numerous requests from patients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this purpose,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had not intended on getting a facial lift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using injectable gels in an attempt at “facial balancing” meant that by the time she reached her late 20s, she was “botched”. “I didn’t undergo this because I desired to appear young,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler ruined my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the filler, I don’t believe I would be where I’m at currently.”

Whether dermal fillers ever fully dissolve has long been a debated topic in the aesthetics industry. “Research have indicated that they seldom fully dissipate,” states Grover, “but they move and can obstruct lymphatic channels. A contributing factor to what we call ‘pillow face’ is also the fact that to some extent, the face gets slightly waterlogged because its capacity to remove bodily fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the topic is preliminary, cautionary statements on dermal fillers’ potential impact on the body’s drainage have been released, and further research announced. One highly regarded face specialist, commenting on the condition of anonymity, says he would avoid using injectables in a client because of the dangers they present. “Many surgeons avoid talk about this, because the companies who produce filler can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing court orders after expressing worries.

Choice and Surgery

For Preisinger, once she started injecting filler, she believed she needed to continue adding more – especially as it started to migrate to different areas of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in Florida suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. Two years later, she found herself choosing between a selection of suggested accommodations in the city, sent to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Initially, Preisinger had planned for an upper and lower blepharoplasty – better known as blepharoplasty – but her surgeon advised her that a facial lift was the correct option for the looseness she was finding in her face. She booked a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The eve of her surgery, one day after she’d touched down alone in the country, she decided to add a lip lift. “Then he stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ Then he said, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will contour your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day surgery, plus a three-day|